'Bus fare' teenage rapist jailed

A man has been jailed for at least six years for raping a young woman who had been thrown off her last bus home because she was 20p short of the fare.

Joseph Moran was branded a "pathological liar" by the judge who sentenced him at Nottingham Crown Court for the brutal rape of the young woman.

Judge James Sampson told Moran his defence that he had stumbled across the victim and helped her on the night of the attack was reprehensible.

Moran, who picked at his fingers and stared blankly as sentence was passed, was told by the judge: "You claimed to have come across her and claimed to have come to her aid.

"It's a line you maintained throughout your trial. It's obvious that you're a pathological liar and a man without an ounce of remorse or shame."

The judge ordered him to serve an indeterminate sentence with a minimum term of six and half years.

The 23-year-old woman had been out with friends in Nottingham on December 9 last year when a driver refused to let her board the last bus to Mansfield because she was 20p short of the £5 fare. She began walking along Mansfield Road out of the city where she had arranged to be collected by her mother when she was attacked.

Moran, 19, from Sneinton, subjected the young woman to an appalling and protracted attack lasting 25 minutes. She suffered 26 injuries across her body when he grabbed her by the neck and dragged her into undergrowth in the Forest Recreation Ground.

Judge Sampson told him the victim was "intelligent, hard-working, brave, full of the optimism of youth and who, but for want of a small act of kindness, was left isolated and vulnerable in the small hours of the city".

He sentenced Moran, who appeared in court wearing jeans and a t-shirt, to serve the sentence in a young offenders' institute.